a marriage took place but it turns out the Uma's new husband already has a wife. She lives with his sisters while he lives in another town spending her dowry on his ailing business. Uma's father quickly spirits her home. We are also told of the episode of Anamika's (Uma's cousin) sad fate. She has won a scholarship to Oxford but her parents insist that she get married. She does and fails to please her husband by providing him with children. He keeps her for a time as a servant but eventually she dies by burning. It is strongly hinted that her in-laws killed her. The final scene of Part 1 is the immersion of Anamika's ashes in the sacred river. We are left with great sympathy for Uma and her simple kindness as she survives as best she can in a not altogether friendly world. In Part 2 we meet Arun, Uma's privileged brother. He is attending college in America and during summer holidays he lives with the Pattons, an all-American family. Again, the plot is not complex or intricate. The events are told in a serial manner as Arun encounters them. Of note is his intense dislike of American food and cooking methods. He is dismayed at the behaviour of Melanie, the daughter who is deeply troubled and suffering from bulimia. Although Mrs Patton seems to care about Melanie, she does little to help. While apparently close, the family are actually distant from one another, something very different from Arun's experience of family life in India. Arun spends most of his time alone and isolated. Arun tries his best to escape from western society but in vain. Reception The novel was well-received by critics. In an initial review for India Today, Jyoti Arora wrote "A certain starkness of vision, an uncompromising realism and superbly evocative images are immediately striking in the novel." For Salon, Sylvia Brownrigg wrote, Fasting, Feasting is a novel not of plot but of comparison. In beautifully detailed prose Desai draws the foods and textures of an Indian small town and of an American suburb. In both, she suggests, family life is a complex mixture of generosity and meanness, license and restriction: The novel's subtle revelation is in the unlikely similarities." Controversy The day after JM Coetzee's novel, Disgrace, was announced as the winner of the 1999 Booker Prize, in an article for The Guardian,